Lack of star treatment, Matt? I believe Bijou Phillips might have some appropriate advice for you.

Joaquin Phoenix seems to have confused the words "hoax" and "hilarious misjudgment."

I don't believe for a second that Paris Hilton thinks Gordon Ramsay is British Prime Minister. For one thing, it means she'd have to know that the UK is a bicameral parliamentary democracy with an essentially powerless regal head of state.

Pupster, you new here or something? Who did you google to get the celebritology link?

Jessica, don't bother with Bill O'Reilly. He's totally not worth it. Plus, you can't be that dumb. Dumb is the chick in my office who asked how Jesus could be a carpenter when there were no carpets back then? As in, she thinks a carpenter is someone who lays carpet. Seriously. I need a new job.

Matt Damon campaigned aggressively for Barack Obama last year. So why wasn't he in Washington D.C. last week for the historic inauguration? "[My wife] Luciana and I decided we wanted to go," he tells the Miami Herald. "But when I called my contacts from the campaign, they just started laughing: 'We worked on the campaign for 2 1/2 years, and we're not going. Forget it.' "But then they called me back the next day and said, 'Hey, we've got two tickets for you, in the bleachers, and you'll actually be able to see Obama take the oath. Just $25,000 apiece.'" It was then that Damon (who lives with his wife and three daughters in Miami Beach) knew, "I'm going to watch. From my couch"...

Jessica Alba has taken to her Celebrity MySpace blog to defend herself over accusations made by Bill O'Reilly and TMZ.com that she is dumb. When a reporter approached her at an inauguration event last week, she tried to turn the tables on him by asking him what Barack Obama's greatest characteristic was. When the reporter said he felt uncomfortable answering because he is a journalist, Alba replied, "be neutral - be Sweden about it." TMZ.com later called her a "ditz" and an "arrogant buffoon" for saying Sweden instead of Switzerland when referring to the neutral country during WWII...

(Hey, TMZ.com: Sweden was ALSO neutral during WW II. So who's the "ditz" and an "arrogant buffoon" now?)

jelo, you raise an astute point re Updike. I don't know whether he was actually misogynistic (especially in his Rabbit tetralogy), or merely reflecting the attitudes of an era ('50s, early '60s). Supposedly "The Witches of Eastwick" was his make-good novel.

I'll happily give Jessica Alba the benefit of the doubt and not assume that she had good fortune in covering a mistake.
But the Matt Damon headline is totally misleading. I'm sure his point was everybody and his brother went to the inauguration and there was no room for him.

sorcerers_cat
Not a celebrity story, but LA news today is obsessed with this birth of octuplets at Kaiser. It took 46 medical professionals to deliver what they thought would be seven and turned out to be eight babies--what do you think THAT costs?

It creeps me out. I'm all for the miracle of birth and all that, but human beings aren't supposed to have litters.

(I then commented that such public fascination goes back at least as far as the naturally-occurring Dionne quints in Québec in the 1930s)

ep
"practically put them on display." No, quite literally put them on display. It was not the parents however. The Canadian government took the girls away from the parents deeming them "unfit" and gave them their own big home across the road. The girls were then displayed for visitors for YEARS. Plus, endlessly studied by so-called doctors. One experiment involved them having to taste different colored papers to see if they tasted different. The girls spit them out.

The parents did not regain custody until the girls were teenagers (maybe pre-teen). Then it was still a mess. They were blamed for all the family troubles, etc. All those girls ever wanted was privacy. The surviving three had to sue the Canadian government to see even some of the money they earned for the state when they were too old to support themselves. It's a very sad story.

I agree about John Updike and his misogynistic protagonists. Read a couple of his books and then never went back, but I must thank him for introducing me to the concept of the Barcalounger. What a great word! What a great concept!

Investigators believe Olivia Newton-John's missing boyfriend is alive and on the run from debt.

This is hardly news. At least a year ago NBC Dateline devoted an entire hour to this story, including multiple sightings of Patrick McDermott in Cabo. (I recall Keith Morrison as anchor; he's turned into such a caricature that I totally enjoyed SNL's long-overdue parody this fall of his creepy, smarmy, leering style).

"Sources connected with the investigation tell us John Travolta told EMT workers he wanted to fly his son to Florida rather than drive by ambulance to the hospital....which was 45 minutes away. There was a disagreement over which course would be better. John felt initially it might take the same amount of time to get his son to Florida where he might get better care. The document at issue would have released emergency services from any liability if Travolta elected the Florida route."

The payday wouldn't have been as big, but it would've been far safer just to have auctioned off the material to the highest bidder among the tabloids?

Nosy - I don't get what the big deal is about the Travolta document is. I mean, they were trying to figure out what would be better - ambulance 45 minutes or flying to FL in what he thought would be the same amount of time and waiving liablity if he chose option #2. I guess I just don't understand why anyone would pay $2 for this information.

Aw, hodie. You are automatic, systematic, and hydromatic. Would a little more love make you stop pretending? Would a little more love make a happy ending? Now were are here in Xanadu. Let's get physical.

OK, I'll stop now. Didn't realize I was such an ONJ fan -- guess it's because she and I share the same birthday (she is much older).

Well, I never thought of Jessica Alba as the brightest crayon in the box, but given that it is now a war between Jessica and Bill O'Reilly, I feel compelled to take Jessica's side. As Dorkus said, it's hard to take falafel/loofah man seriously when he questions someone's intelligence.

For similar ideological reasons, Benicio Del Toro walking out on the Washington Times makes him seem that much cooler in my book. Just sayin'.

Also, that's the second time I've heard about a purported hookup between Evan Rachel Wood and Mickey Rourke. As such, I assume the rumor is true. Gross. Just gross. Someone get that girl a therapist, stat. She obviously has major daddy issues.

Nosy, your words, "It's a very sad story" say just about all that needs to be said about the Canadian government's treatment of the Dionnes. They rolled over the parents, who didn't have a chance, and treated the kids like circus freaks.

BTW, the family home is now set up as a museum on the outskirts of my hometown. (Even though it's a five minute drive from where I lived for half my life, I've never been inside.)

Matt Damon's comments did not come across at all like wanting "star" treatment.
I think that every intelligent person in the world would have responded to a request to purchase a $25,000 bleacher seat with thanks but no thanks.
Noting egotistical or star trement(ish) about his comments at all.

rashibama, Patrick McGoohan's obit pointed out that he rejected the martini/woman-bedding Bond formula (wouldn't even kiss a woman on-screen, out of fidelity to his wife), which is what inspired him to create the character John Drake on "Danger Man" ("Secret Agent" in the US).

Well, James Bond never pretended to be a moral compass. He was a secret agent with a job to do who liked women and good vodka. You know, I never saw him drunk, and he treated his women nicely. Everybody seemed happy. Yes, there's room in the world for Danger Men, God love'em but sometimes you need a Bond. And a Holly Goodhead.

Mudge, I'm with you--the Jolie-Pitt clan is too adorable for words. Maddox is so handsome. Zahara gets prettier every time I see her. And it does look like little Vivienne will be the double of Shiloh.

I'm going to side with the pro-Matt Damon camp -- I didn't find anything in that article very offensive. I'd resent a 25k per bleacher seat shakedown too.

ERW and Mickey Rourke, can I please have a dose of the brain bleach when you're done?

Carl Berstein looks a lot more like Dustin Hoffman these days than Bob Woodward resembles Robert Redford. I wonder what that means?
Also: check out Gofugyourself today...there is a great pic of Lisa Rinna with no underpants.

Gee, I can't even refer to Bill O'Reilly with a common misspelling of of a 7-letter word that begins with "a", ends in "e" and has a double "s" and "hol" in the middle. I guess that double "$" is in the dirty word dictionary. I suppose I'll have to be prim and proper and describe Mister O'Reilly as an anus encrusted with fecal matter.

I think the Paris Hilton item has been taken out of context. I was reading the account in the Independent and she was speaking of her image as an airhead and she responded that she knew that Gordon B. was the PM and that Gordon R. was a restaurantuer.

We had 4-6 inches of snow with a coating of 1/2-1inch of ice, then 4-6 more inches. We are close enough to the Mason-Dixon line that people here go beserko when they see or even hear about snow and ice. I'm from the snow belt so I'm quite used to it. Our weatherman was actually so excited he was actually hyperventilating.

Songs from Grease plus Mae West -- what a wonderful day on Celebritology.

I don't know if Olivia Newton John's ex-boyfriend is alive or dead, but I do know that Mr. King and his website and the whole Dateline involvement creeps me out. Let the man run, who cares. If the government wanted him that badly, presumably the FBI would be after him. Meanwhile, what's he done to you, Dateline, that you've got to stick your big fat nose in his business? I don't know, I like a good "fake my death, go on the lam in a warm climate" story and I'm totally rooting for Patrick whats-his-name on this one.

I had often thought about selling my fat (in partnership with a fat-sucker doctor) to plastic surgeons who plump-up starlets lips. (How could you go wrong with a Grade AAA fat infusion - and it's a renewable resource).

Now, this fat-burning vehicle opens all sorts of new oppoprtunities for those of us who are sometimes butt-challenged.

Conscientious objectors who wish to remain or become slim can perform alternate governmental service by having the energy they exert on exercise bikes, elliptical trainers, treadmills etc. collected and transmitted to power substations.

Wait til I tell Mrs. Rashibama that my plan to re-lose "those 20 pounds" is going to be a part of realizing our national obsession for energy independence.

"the Middle East of the new world . . ."
Curmudgeon, you should trademark that.
We could do t-shirts with a print of a pleasantly plump person sitting in lounge chair drinking beer and eating brownies and cheez curls.